ESSAY INCOMING:
Back in early 2003, I remember when I'd pass by the games section in Sainsbury's (grocery store here in the UK) I'd always stop by the games section to see what they had to offer. Back then, it'd be mostly PC games that caught my eye, though as I looked at the PC titles, I'd always see this game titled 'Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast'. I never really thought twice about it, though. It wasn't my thing. I had more fun playing games GTA III and Tony Hawks on my PS2. Then, one time while talking to my friend, he tells me about this "Star Wars game" where you can "be a Jedi and fight people". Sounded interesting to me, and when I went to his house and saw him playing 'ctf_ns_streets' I was instantly hooked.
I got it myself, and when I got bored of being called 'Padawan' I started to think of names. At that point I was quite proud of having some greek cypriot heritage, and from going to church I always heard about "the Alpha and the Omega", so I decided to take the name 'Alpha' because of what it meant and represented. I then started playing with a group of people called 'Xenotype Outcasts' on JK2 1.02. They were fundamentally very similar to *<JO>*, only lacking in the RP.
This is a skin one guy, named Ash or 'FoolishProphet' made for me. If you look in the comments, you can see an embarassing post from a young me. Sadly, eventually that clan dissolved and guy called Sean or 'Knight' decided to create a new clan, 'Brotherhood of the Sword' with the tags '{>|<}'. We ended up eventually moving over to Star Wars Galaxies and for the most part leaving JK2. I followed them, and we played for a while before the second CU patch ruined that game. But anyway, I digress.
I kept trying to use mods for JK2 1.02, in particular this Yoda skin. Whenever I tried put it on, he was huge! That, and various gametype mods weren't working. It wasn't until I heard about a magical, moddable 1.04 land where people could have two sabers, the ability to sit and sleep and so on that it all made sense. So, I jumped on it and after messing around for a while, found a server called 'Jedi Order Temple'. What happened from there is a bit hazy, but I remember watching over things like a tournament being held by Master Aoshi, or Wooklyn spawning towers of Stormtroopers. I became friendly with a Knight called Kenshin, who pulled me aside and spoke to me about joining *<JO>*. He wanted to become my Master were I to eventually join, and as I couldn't get on the forums for some reason, he wrote my application for me. After that, he pretty much disappeared. I then met PhantXar, who told me I really needed two names to join *<JO>*. He came up with a few surnames, one being 'Zhen'. Interested, I proposed 'Jhen'. He thought it sounded pretty cool, so from then on I became 'Alpha Jhen'! As Kenshin had left, PhantXar suggested I become his Padawn when I joined. However, soon after he got another Padawan, so that fell in.
That's when I met some douchenozzle Jedi called Shin (though some of you may know him as Achilles or Shin'dai). We used to duel on the pad in 'ffa_bespin' and chat about random crap. I had no idea at the time, but he'd eventually end up becoming a friend very dear to me. He eventually got promoted as a Knight, and around that time I was accepted as a Padawan. Almost a decade later, here I am!
